Computer manufacturers offer their customers servers that do not have a pre-installed operating system. This enables the customer to install whatever operating system and software they require without needing to remove or update the pre-installed operating system. Customers use manufacturer-supported remote provisioning mechanisms to enable the operating system to be remotely installed through local network connections. The provisioning burden is minimized by centralizing copies of the operating system on a server and loading copies from the server onto another server. One example of provisioning servers with operating systems over network utilizes a client-server environment to boot software assembly, retrieved from the network, in accordance with a Preboot eXecution Environment (PXE) specification which now forms part of the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) standard Version 2.5, published April 2015. The PXE specification details a procedure where a client server discovers a PXE boot server over a network and then boots to an image that is delivered by the PXE boot server. In instances, the procedures utilize unique identifying information of the client server so that a dynamic host configuration protocol (DHCP) may recognize the client server and provide the client server with an internet protocol (IP) address. The client server may then retrieve an operating system boot image from the PXE boot server. Other techniques and procedures may be used to boot a server over a network.
Present systems utilize conventional storage in the form of read-only memory (ROM) or FLASH technologies for holding the pre-boot code, random-access memory (RAM) for holding remote configuration code, and mass storage devices, such as magnetic disk drives, solid state drives, SD Card, etc., for holding the operating system image.